Saturday, January 17, 2009

I'm reaching the bottom of my review pile. I currently have two more products from Adventure Games Publishing to review and three more from Brave Halfling Publishing. Most of these products are fairly short and I'll probably finish them up this coming week.

With that in mind, does anyone have any suggestions for future products they'd like to see reviewed here?

33 comments:

Hmm. I suppose this might fall too far afield of Grognardia’s scope, but I think I’d really like to read your opinion of Mongoose’s adaption of Lankhmar/Nehwon for RuneQuest. (From the perspective of using it with any system.)

Hi,I am just going to jump in here and go off-topic for a few minutes and mention I just discovered this BLOG and I am slowly working my way through it.

I have been playing D&D since 1981 (so about 28 years). I skipped 2e but joined back during 3e and 3.5e. I have to say thanks to JM and other posters here who helped me finally put a word to my feeling of "something missing" with modern D&D - old school gaming, sandbox vs Adventure Path and Gygaxian Naturalism.

Thanks very much. I am currently re-tooling my 20 year old campaign setting to go back more to its roots. No more giant stat blocks and detailed histories of areas beyond those the various parties have created almost whole cloth over the years.

I was getting ready to write a post in my blog asking about "all the other fantasy" that seems to be ignored when discussing early D&D. Most people are pretty conversant with the feedback loop between fantasy and D&D in the mid-80s on but there were lots of authors current at the founding whose work isn't epic Tolkien pastiche or weird fantasy descended. I'm thinking of things ranging from the early Xanth novels (the first was published in 1977) to Jo Clayton's works (first published in 1978 with "A Diadem of Stars") to Andre Norton's Witch World (first published 1963 and the majority in 1978 or earlier) to Kurtz's Deryni (first published 1970 and Kurtz was a member of SAGA) to Bradley's Darkover (science fantasy indeed). Some D&D influenced authors would go on to write books I consider outside of the modern fantasy epic Tolkien pastiche mainstream. Katherine Kerr's novels for example (although you could shoehorn her into "romantic fantasy" if you tried really, really hard).

Where was their influence, especially on the late Golden Age and Silver Age (when Kerr was writing for Dragon)? If there wasn't any, why not? Does it have to do with most of them being women?

The reason I ask is most of these books seem perfect examples of what the Silver age could/should have been. The plots do center on events with a much larger canvas than the typical S&S story and include many popular trappings such as prophecy, old troubles rising, etc. However, they lack the epic good versus evil in either the Tolkien (the long, twilight struggle) or post Tolkien (good triumphant) form and have many more everyman heroes and morally mixed heroes than modern epic fantasy does.

I guess that's not technically a review request but it's something I've been thinking about. These books constituted a good deal of my 80s reading and much of what I tried to bring to D&D and other fantasy gaming in that period.

I've always wanted to learn more Lejandary Adventures from someone who's better versed at analyzing rules that I am. It seems like a large part of Gary Gygax's later life and I'd be interested to know how his ideas about gaming evolved.

I'd also really like to see more reviews of system neutral products. Modules are okay, but I enjoyed the Classic Monsters Revisited, Points of Light, and Random Esoteric Creature products you looked at. More of those please!

Oh, I certainly will do that. I'm waiting on a bunch of solo adventures I ordered before I start diving deeply into T&T. I'll post my thoughts on the game once I've had a chance to give it the attention it deserves.

I guess that's not technically a review request but it's something I've been thinking about. These books constituted a good deal of my 80s reading and much of what I tried to bring to D&D and other fantasy gaming in that period.

That's a really good suggestion, but I'm not sure I'm the one to write it, mostly because my acquaintance with most of the authors you cite is limited. I didn't really read a lot of contemporary fantasy during the Silver Age, since it (mostly) wasn't my cup of tea and I just kept re-reading the stuff I did like.

But what you suggest is a very interesting project and someone ought to do it.

It seems like a large part of Gary Gygax's later life and I'd be interested to know how his ideas about gaming evolved.

I've never even seen a copy of the game, unfortunately. It doesn't appear to have been much of a hit round these parts.

I'd also really like to see more reviews of system neutral products. Modules are okay, but I enjoyed the Classic Monsters Revisited, Points of Light, and Random Esoteric Creature products you looked at. More of those please!

I'd like to see some of Oone's products and maps reviewed. They're short, and many have a cool blueprint feel to them. Again,not sure if that's too far outside, but the price is right. Heck, I'll buy one and send it to you, just to get it started.

Have you covered the old Flying Buffalo systemless books, the "Catalyst" series including Maps, Grimtooth's and the Citybooks? The Citybooks, in particular, are wonderful material for any campaign and the list of authors is quite an old school "Who's Who".

I'll second Dragon Warriors. First of all, there are few to no reviews of the Mongoose edition, and secondly, the one (incomplete) review I could find (over on ENworld) contained a note on the cover art that I think you'd find interesting:

"cover is done in color and depicts 4 adventurers (presumably a knight, barbarian, sorcerer and mystic) on guard as they descend cracked stone stairs into the unknown depths of some crumbling ruin. The art is old school in flavor but very evocative of a more dark and subdued adventurers than the wahoo style of more modern games...these adventurers look like they really don't want to be doing this and actually fear what lurks in the darkness before them."

And yes, if Mongoose knew what was good for them they'd send you a review copy post-haste! :D

And yes, if Mongoose knew what was good for them they'd send you a review copy post-haste! :D

I don't seek out review copies; I always feel a bit cheap doing that and goodness knows I already own more RPG stuff than I ought to. Still, I'm always grateful when people send stuff my way to look at and I'd be happy to review anything Mongoose might send me, but I'm not holding my breath.

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